Page 6 of Bad & Bossy

A woman who was absolutely old enough to know better reached far over the railing, her hand wrapped around a pipe I knew next to nothing about — and I did not want to be the reason the entire brewhouse came to a screeching halt.

“Stop, stop!” I pushed through the people between us, forcing them up against the railing. The woman recoiled, her eyes going wide, and slowly but surely she brought her entire body back to the catwalk.

The fact that this was the third time this month that this same thing had occurred made literally zero difference. I didn’t know how to handle it the first time, and I still didn’t know how to handle it now.

“Please don’t… touch anything,” I said, loud enough for the people in the back to hear. “Everything in here is important. There’s a reason we’re not down on the ground.”

“Right. Sorry,” the woman mumbled.

I glanced down toward Cole, hoping to God he hadn’t seen that, but of course, he was staring directly up at me.

————

Twenty minutes. I’d only run over by twenty minutes. I could still make it to the nanny’s before Drew fell asleep.

I pulled on my leather jacket from my old riding days and zipped it up. My purse was somewhere in the sea of hanging bags, and as I searched through them, the door opened behind me. Immediately, my spine stiffened.

“Dana? Can you hang back a minute?”

Not Cole. Breathing a sigh of relief, I unhooked my purse and turned. “I really need to get going.”

Allison, my manager, shifted on her feet uncomfortably, her eyes darting back out into the hallway. “I know. I’m sorry. But the owner wants to meet with you.”

For fucks sake.

“Me?” I scoffed, trying to play it off as if it wasn’t a big deal, as if the thought of being alone in a room with Cole didn’t make my stomach sink. There was a questioning glint in her eyes, though. “Why?”

“He saw your employee of the month photo?—”

“Seriously? Goddammit. Why do we even have those?” I groaned, throwing my head back in frustration as I stepped through the door. “Drew’s not gonna sleep tonight if I leave much later.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Allison sighed. “I tried explaining that your shift had already run over but he’s very… well, no nonsense. You haven’t worked under him yet, Dana. He’s more of a hard ass than Ben.”

Somehow that didn’t surprise me in the slightest.

She walked with me in silence to the elevator, briefly giving me directions to Cole’s office as the doors closed and separated us. As the elevator lifted me higher, it felt like my freedom was slipping away.

How fucking convenient that the moment I found a job that paid well, and one I actually enjoyed when tourists weren’t actively trying to destroy machinery, that this had to be the outcome. I’d finally been able to stand on my own two feet competently and my brief fling, my one-night stand that ended in disaster, turns out to be the boss. If there was a god, he certainly had it out for me.

Those eyes found me the moment I stepped out of the elevator.

“You actually came.”

I didn’t do Cole the decency of meeting his gaze as I stepped around his hulking frame. “Not like I had much of a choice,” I mumbled.

Whatever conversation he wanted to have absolutely wasn’t going to be done where someone could stumble upon us, and I was going to make damn sure of that. I followed Allison’s directions to his office and let him trail silently behind me. The floor was clean and shiny; not a chance that a single spec of stickiness would be clinging to my shoes. The only sound was our heavy footfalls and the swing of his office door as we entered it.

I wondered where the other guy had gone, if he’d sent him home or if he was waiting around downstairs.

The door clicked shut behind me. “Been a while. Don’t you think?” he asked, his deep voice trailing around me as he weaved his way to his dusty desk and office chair. As he sat, a cloud of it puffed up, dancing in the low light around us. Had the sun been out, the view from his office would’ve been incredible—all mountains and trees with only a trace of the street below. But all that filtered through now was a lonesome streetlamp, reflected headlights, and a hint of the stars above.

“Can we please not do this?” I asked, not caring how badly it came across. I didn’t want to be in here and it wasn’t like he couldn’t tell already. I didn’t even bother sitting, didn’t care to bring home any dust or make him believe I was staying long.

His lips curled into a thin, harsh line. “When did you start working here, Dana?” he asked, avoiding my question as if it were the plague. And as much as I didn’t want to play into his interrogation game, I knew him well enough to know it was the quickest way out of this situation.

“About five months ago,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “You didn’t need to bring me up here for that. Surely you could just check my file.”

Avoiding the heaviness of his gaze, I gave myself a moment to take in the expanse of his office. Exposed brick, just like Allison’s office and like every other wall in the building. The only difference was the sheer size and the ornate furniture that littered it. A solid, perfectly carved wooden desk, a chair that likely cost more than a year’s worth of my rent, lamps that looked like the original fixtures in the bar.

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